When was Wellington Arch built?
Wellington Arch, also known as Constitution Arch or (originally) as the Green Park Arch, is a Grade I-listed triumphal arch by Decimus Burton that forms the centrepiece of Hyde Park Corner in central London, between the corners of Hyde Park and Green Park; it stands on a large traffic island with pedestrian crossings. The arch…
Wellington Arch, also known as Constitution Arch or (originally) as the Green Park Arch, is a Grade I-listed triumphal arch by Decimus Burton that forms the centrepiece of Hyde Park Corner in central London, between the corners of Hyde Park and Green Park; it stands on a large traffic island with pedestrian crossings.
The arch stood in a different position nearby from its construction (1826-1830) until it was transferred to its current location in 1882-1883. It was named after the sculptor Matthew Cotes Wyatt’s gigantic equestrian monument of the 1st Duke of Wellington.
Sculptor Adrian Jones’s Peace descending on the Quadriga of War, a bronze quadriga (an ancient four-horse chariot) ridden by the Goddess of Victory Nike, has surmounted the arch since 1912.
George IV planned both the Wellington Arch and the Marble Arch (originally located in front of Buckingham Palace) in 1825 to commemorate Britain’s victory in the Napoleonic Wars.
During the second half of the 1820s, the Commissioners of Woods and Forests and the King decided that Hyde Park and the surrounding area should be renovated to rival the splendour of rival European capital cities, with the essence of the new arrangement being a triumphal approach to the newly completed Buckingham Palace.
Decimus Burton was chosen as the project’s architect by a commission led by Prime Minister Lord Liverpool and assisted by Charles Arbuthnot, President of the Board of Commissioners of Woods and Forests.
Arbuthnot testified to a Parliamentary Select Committee on the Government’s spending on public works in 1828 that he selected Burton after seeing “pieces which satisfied my eye, from their architectural beauty and correctness” in Regent’s Park and elsewhere.
Burton planned to build an urban park dedicated to the House of Hanover, national pride, and the nation’s heroes.
When was Wellington Arch built?
The arch stood in a different position nearby from its construction (1826-1830) until it was transferred to its current location in 1882-1883. It was named after the sculptor Matthew Cotes Wyatt’s gigantic equestrian monument of the 1st Duke of Wellington.
